Monday, November 5, 2018

On Dog and Cat Language

On Dog and Cat Language

Imagine
that in the future, dogs and cats acquire the power of speech. This may be by
evolution, or by our genetic manipulation, or a combination of the two; and the
result gives dogs and cats the full human mental mechanics of vocabulary
acquisition and grammar; by which they could send messages of great complexity
and specificity.

I
predict that they would express this ability in different ways. Dogs would
learn the human’s language; they would struggle to approximate human pronunciation;
and it would mostly be about giving human orders to the dogs. Typical dog
utterance; “What can I do for you?” The dogs would also talk to each other, in
a doggy sub-dialect of the human language, with more words about smells. Some
of these neologisms will be appropriated by the humans.

Whereas
the cats would teach a language to their humans; it would be in normal cat
sounds, which the humans will clumsily approximate in reply; and it would be
mostly about giving cat orders to the humans. Typical cat utterance; “What’s in
it for me?” It would be a private language, known to the cat and its human
alone. The cats would never converse directly; but they will often use a human to relay insults to each
other.

In theory a two-timing cat can pass secret messages from one
human to another; but only if the humans can motivate the cat to do so.